LA Fires - Post 2

Like most wildfires, the first reaction to LA fires is climate change. Did climate change play a role?

As I stated in my last post, California had two wet winters followed by a very dry season. These wet winters led to a lot of vegetation growth that dried out during the following arid season. So these three seasons of extreme climate - lots of precipitation followed by drought - could be attributed to climate change. Even if we magically stop any more CO2 emissions, there is already so much CO2 embodied in the atmosphere that such unpredictable climate seasonal patterns are inevitable. 

But once the fire started, could we have reacted differently or taken some actions to prevent or mitigate its spread? And what can we learn to make our communities more wildfire resilient in the future?

Solar geoengineering and stratospheric aerosol injections have often been referred to as potential climate “fixes” down the road. Also called cloud seeding, this technique revolves around injecting small particles into our atmosphere to “generate” rainfall. Unfortunately, cloud seeding still requires moisture to be present in the atmosphere. Given the aridity and dryness of the southern California region’s climate, this technique would not have helped.

A lot has been made of forest management - the concept of proactively burning fires. Countries like Austria have almost half of their land covered by forests. Yet, we seldom hear about devastating forest fires in landlocked European countries. Perhaps there is merit to proactive forest management pursued by these countries, including “cleaning up” forests through controlled burning or destruction of dry bark beetles. A similar approach could be applied to the removal of dry brushes that spread the flames in the LA fires.

Apart from dry brushes, urban structures and electric lines also fueled the fire. Some steps to make urban structures become fire-proof include removing vegetation around structures, using more fire-resistant building materials, and ensuring they have some distance between them to break the fires. In fast-spreading wildfires, it is not just about individual homes or buildings. The entire neighborhood or community has to adopt such measures. Most communities in the US have high urban density housing, such as the type in Pacific Palisades. So all it takes is one structure to catch fires for the fire to spread. 

Unfortunately, many of the urban structures we occupy today were built when such wildfires were not prevalent. Thus, making changes to existing structures will be an expensive undertaking. While more stringing fire resistant building regulations will come to play for future construction, a vexing question facing urban communities that are vulnerable to climate change will be what do with existing structures.

References:

Cloud seeding. (n.d.). https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hrd_sub/cseed.html

Willmoth, H. (2025, January 14). What is cloud seeding? Marjorie Taylor Greene’s wildfires solution mocked. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/cloud-seeding-marjorie-taylor-greene-california-wildfire-2014871

iGlobenews. (2025, January 27). Austria’s Forest Management: a model for wildfire prevention and control. https://www.iglobenews.org/austria-forest-management/

Wainwright, O. (2025, January 15). ‘Criminally reckless’: why LA’s urban sprawl made wildfires inevitable – and how it should rebuild. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jan/15/criminally-reckless-la-wildfires-urban-sprawl